Summary: The second of six sermons addressing sexual sin. This message focuses on pornography.

A. If you have your Bible, please turn to Jeremiah 2. For several weeks now, I’ve had this very strong sense that there are a number of things about which God wants to speak to us from this book.

1. It really is an amazing book. Now while there isn’t really any chronological or thematic order to the overall book, there is something very significant that happens in chapters 2-4 which lays a very important foundation to everything else God wants to speak to us about.

2. The issue in chapters 2-4 is sin. God speaks very passionately and directly about our sin. Now a few weeks ago, I was planning on looking at these chapters from that broad perspective--what does God say about sin in general.

B. But as I was praying about this, I felt that the Lord was wanting us to look more specifically at a particular sin that the people of Judah were wrestling with. It’s not the only sin mentioned in this passage but it is the predominate one.

1. What is it? Sexual sin. Throughout these chapters, it is very clear that God’s people are struggling with sexual immorality.

C. The people in Jeremiah’s time were living in a very sexually promiscuous and sexually obsessed culture.

1. Everywhere you looked there were these ’temples’ where a person could act out their sexual fantasies and desires with a temple prostitute any time they wanted.

2. These temples were a part of the accepted practices of the culture in which they lived and the people of God began to indulge in this stuff. And didn’t think it was that big of a deal.

3. Now the similarities between their culture and ours are striking. We too live in a culture that has become increasingly obsessed with sex and has made sexual sin incredibly accessible--through the internet or pay per view tv, a person can indulge in most any sexual fantasy imaginable.

4. The stats on porn usage are staggering. 12% of all web sites are pornographic in nature. 42% of all internet users view porn. Every month, there are 72 million visitors to porn sites. 1 out of 3 of those visitors are women. The revenue from the porn industry exceeds the combined revenue of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, ebay, Yahoo, apple, and Netflix combined.

3. And that’s just porn. That’s not including all the other avenues for sexual immorality in our culture.

D. And here’s what’s really scary: Statistics reveal that the sexual practices of Christians and non-Christians are virtually identical in terms of porn usage, premarital sex, adultery, you name it.

1. A survey a few years ago of Christian men who attended Promise Keepers revealed that 53% had viewed porn in the previous week.

2. While God’s people have never stood for or encouraged this in our culture, what is happening is that we are increasingly allowing this into our lives.

3. Now I know that, especially for women, there is often a difficulty in seeing the relevance of this. But I want to encourage you to listen with an open heart because this is relevant to you.

4. It’s a struggle to probably 95% of the men you know. The other 5% are probably lying. It is relevant in the huge self esteem issues that women often struggle with--feeling like they have to look and dress a particular way in order to feel valued. It is relevant if you have experienced the trauma of being touched inappropriately or gawked at.